Before joining Anglia Ruskin in 2013, Richard taught at the University of East Anglia and worked at the think tank Localis and for the political campaign Stamp Out Poverty. He is a member of our Labour History Research Unit. His historical work has primarily focused on the impact of the First World War on interwar British politics.

Background

Richard Carr has published widely on twentieth century British politics. In 2013 he published the monograph Veteran MPs and Conservative Politics in the Aftermath of the Great War, which surveyed the post-conflict careers of the 448 men who fought between 1914 and 1918 and subsequently became Tory MPs. With Bradley W. Hart he has edited a volume on the modern Conservative Party and published a survey book of The Global 1920s. He has most recently authored a political biography of the filmmaker Charlie Chaplin for Routledge, and is currently researching the relationship between the UK Labour Party and US Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s.

Away from academia, he engages with public policy in several ways. In 2012 he published the report Credit Where Credit's Due for the think tank Localis, which looked at infrastructure finance and received praise from across the political spectrum. This was followed in 2015 by two reports – The Next LEPs and Commercial Councils – which looked at various future facing aspects of local economic growth. He has carried out a variety of snapshot surveys on the views of the Labour Party grassroots, to significant media coverage.

Elsewhere, in 2010 Richard was a By-Fellow at the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, where he was awarded the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Grant. He has previously served as a commissioning editor to the blog Left Foot Forward. In 2017 he took part in the Political Economy Workshop at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Research interests

British politics, elections and parliamentary procedure in the 20th century

British Conservatism, Socialism, and Fascism

Eugenics

One Nation politics

The life and times of Charlie Chaplin

Contemporary local government and economic growth

Areas of research supervision

British politics, elections and parliamentary procedure in the 20th century

British Conservatism, Socialism, and Fascism

Eugenics

One Nation politics

The life and times of Charlie Chaplin, and the politics of film

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy

The 1920s generally

Teaching

Richard teaches the modules Introduction to politics, Nineteenth Century Europe, Britain in the Twentieth Century, Film and history, Thatcher and new right, and Europe in the age of the First World War.

Qualifications

PhD History, University of East Anglia

MPhil Modern European History, Churchill College, University of Cambridge

BA Modern History, University of East Anglia

Memberships, editorial boards

Royal Historical Society

Political Studies Association Conservative Group

Selected recent publications

Carr, R. 2017, Charlie Chaplin: A Political Biography from Victorian Britain to Modern America, London: Routledge.

Hart, B.W. and Carr, R., 2015. Sterilization and the British Conservative Party: Rethinking the failure of the Eugenic Society’s Political Strategy in the 1930s. Historical Research.

Carr, R., 2013. Conservative Veteran MPs and the ‘Lost Generation’ Narrative after the First World War. Historical Research (IHR), 85(2), pp.284-305.

Carr, R. and Hart, B.W., 2013. ‘Old Etonians, Great War Demographics, and the Interpretations of Interwar British Eugenics, c.1914-1939. Journal of First World War Studies, pp.214-239.

Carr, R. and Hart, B.W., 2013. Machinations of the Centre-Right and British Engagement with the Pan-European Ideal. In: Hart, B.W. and Carr, R. The Foundations of the British Conservative Party: Essays on Conservatism from Lord Salisbury to David Cameron. London: Bloomsbury, pp.107-132.

Carr, R., 2013. How to Put the People First: Conservative Conceptions of Reform Before and After the Second World War. In: Hart, B.W. and Carr, R. The Foundations of the British Conservative Party: Essays on Conservatism from Lord Salisbury to David Cameron. London: Bloomsbury, pp.175-196.

Carr, R., 2013. Veteran MPs and Conservative politics in the aftermath of the Great War: The Memory of All That. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.

Carr, R. and Hart, B.W., 2013. The Foundations of the British Conservative Party: Essays on Conservatism from Lord Salisbury to David Cameron. London: Bloomsbury.

Carr, R., 2012. The Right Looks Left? The Young Tory Response to Macdonald’s Second Labour Government. In: Davis, J., Shepherd, J. and Wrigley, C. (Eds.). The Second Labour Government: A Reappraisal. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.185-202.

Carr, R., 2011. Veterans of the First World War and Conservative Anti-Appeasement.Twentieth Century British History (OUP), 22(1), pp.28-51.

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